Legacy and Companions

25Apr

Today I wanted to talk just a little bit more about companions and how they relate to the Legacy system. I’ll start off by going over what perks exist in the Legacy system for companions and why you would want to unlock them, then we’ll get into how and when you unlock those perks.

I’m also going to talk about companion gifts and how they relate to each of the companions in the game as well as methods you can use to maximize your affection with your companions outside of companion gifts.Companion Legacy Perks
The first thing to understand about the Companion Legacy Perks is how many there are. The game has eight total class, each of which has five companions. So eight classes times five companions equals forty total companion perks. That’s step one, so keep that in mind but don’t dig too deep into that just yet.

Second, you need to note that companion perk actually consists of four individual perks, but three of those perks can only be opened once per legacy. Not once per character or once per faction or whatever, but once per legacy period. Those three non-stacking perks are tied to the five different companion types, and every class has one companion of each of the five types:

That is the list of the three perks that can be unlocked only once per legacy. For example, Vette is a Ranged DPS companion so unlocking her affection will give you a bonus to Crit chance, an extra 12 seconds on your Heroic Moment duration, and a one minute reduction to the cooldown of Heroic Moment. If you then unlock another Ranged DPS companion, such as Zenith from the Jedi Consular, then you will not get any of those three perks from maximizing his affection and completing all of his conversations. However, you can unlock Vette as your Ranged DPS and then unlock Theran Cedrax as Healer and you would get the full perks from both of them because it’s the type of companion that determines these three perks, not which classes you unlock them in.

The fourth perk that’s tied into the companion legacy unlock is a +10 Presence bonus, and you get it for every companion. Keep in mind, when I say “every companion” I’m talking about every unique companion. If you level up two Sith Inquisitors and you finish all of the conversations and quests with Khem Val on both of them, you only get credit for unlocking Khem Val once.

So if you level one of all eight classes and unlock all of your companions then you’ll end up with +400 Presence from the stacking perks, and then you’ll get +60 seconds to Heroic Moment’s duration, -5 minutes on Heroic Moment’s cooldown, and you’ll get a bonus to Surge, Accuracy, Crit chance, Health, and Healing received though I have no hard numbers are any of the stat bonuses.

If you were instead to level two of each class on either the Republic or Imperial faction, then you would end up with only +200 Presence for the 20 unique companions between the four classes, though you would still get the full bonus to HM duration, the full reduction to HM cooldown, and the non-Presence stat buffs.

Here is a table to show you which companions fall into which categories

Class

Melee Tank

Ranged Tank

Melee DPS

Ranged DPS

Healer

Jedi Consular

Qyzen

Lt. Iresso

Nadia

Zenith

Tharan

Jedi Knight

Lord Scourge

T7-01

Kira

Sgt. Rusk

Doc

Smuggler

Bowdaar

Corso

Akavi

Risha

Guss

Trooper

Tanno

M1-4X

Yuun

Aric

Elara

Bounty Hunter

Skadge

Blizz

Torian

Gault

Mako

Imperial Agent

Scorpio

Kaliyo

Vector

Raina

Dr. Lokin

Sith Inquisitor

Khem Val

Xalek

Ashara

Andronikos

Talos

Sith Warrior

Broonmark

Pierce

Jaesa

Vette

Malavi

Unlocking Companion Legacy Perks
Every class has five companions that are tied to their legacy unlocks, and each of those five companions falls into one type of NPC (healer, melee tank, ranged tank, melee dps, ranged dps). To unlock the companion and their associated buffs you’ll need to complete all conversations and quests associated with that companion.

What that means is, you’ll have to increase affection with each companion to somewhere between 9,250 and 10,000 affection because all of those conversations and quests are tied first and foremost to affection level. Some of your companions also have additional restrictions on their conversations and quests, the most common of which is that most (if not all) of the companions that you can romance will require you to complete Chapter 1 (in some cases Chapter 2) before they actually romance you and the romance conversations and quests are reliant on that.

Also, the first companion that every class gets has actual quests that are tied to their affection. So far it looks like each of the first companions has three quest chains that they’ll start for you. Some of them include combat which will restrict the level that you can accomplish them at, and others are purely conversation so can be done at any level.

As I was listening to Darth Hater Podcast Ep. 120 this morning I heard them discussing these companion unlocks and naturally someone on the internet was “wrong” so I’m here to set you right on that part. You do not have to be level 50 to unlock all of your companions’ legacy perks. As you can see in the screenshot below, I have unlocked all five of my companions on my level 36 Warrior (level 38 in the shot). [NOTE: My wife reached level 50 on her Sorc last night and we found the Khem Val does not give you his final quest until you finish your class story, so he basically does require you to be level 50 to unlock his legacy feature. It’s possible that other companions will do the same.]

The Warrior’s first companion, Vette, only has combat in her first quest and her other two are all conversation. I was able to solo all of my class quests on Hoth at level 36-37 which was required to get my final companion. Other classes, such as the Smuggler have a first companion who does have combat in their quests which will restrict the level at which you can complete them without help from higher level characters. I believe when we did Corso’s final quest for my wife, we were level 35’ish facing off against level 45 mobs so we had to have help from one of the guild’s 50’s (thanks War!).

Affection – What Does It Do?
In short, Affection increases your companions’ crew skill performance. For every 2,000 Affection your companions get +1% Crit chance and +3% Efficiency. So at the max 10,000 Affection each of your companions has +5% Crit and +15% Efficiency. I’ve gotten mixed replies when looking for more specific information about whether you get the crit/efficiency bonuses only at the breakpoints or if you get partial percentages as well.

Affection is also the gateway to companion conversations and quests, which is why I brought it up. Most companions, especially those who you do not romance and who are not your first companion, will only need 9,250 Affection to unlock all of their conversations. I suggest you go ahead and max them out regardless so that you get the full bonus to Crit and Efficiency, but if you’re just shooting for being able to unlock all of the legacy features then you can stop with most companions in the lower 9k range.

If you don’t want to bother with reaching max affection, you just want to get all of the quests completed, then the best method of doing this is to gather the companion gifts associated with the companion(s) in question (see below) and then go to your ship. Your ship opens conversation options that do not exist elsewhere, so go there. Do any quests that appear for the companion, and then step off of your ship and back into your hanger. You can’t give gifts inside the ship itself, so you have to step outside.

While in the hanger give your companion gifts to raise them to the next increment of 250 (250, 500, 750, 1,000) and then step back inside your ship. For example, if you’re at 9,014 affection with Broonmark, then you should give him gifts until he’s at 9,250 or higher and then go into the ship to see if another conversation has opened up. There’s an icon that’s supposed to pop up over your companion’s portrait when they want to talk to you, and you’re supposed to right-click on them and they’ll say something about needing to talk to you, but I’ve found that since 1.2 neither of those are reliable. Also, don’t trust your map or mini-map to tell you they have a quest either. Go to where your companion hangs out in your ship and actually look at them to see if there’s a quest marker or not. If there’s not, go back to the hanger and get back to gifting until the next increment of 250 and repeat the process.

[UPDATE: Also, I forgot to mention that if you’re over 9,000 Affection with a given companion then every time you complete the conversations/quests that they have available you should check on your Legacy screen to see if you’ve unlocked the companion. By default the Legacy screen is bound to the ‘Y’ key, but if you’re big on setting up custom keybindings then you may have overwritten that. You can also access the Legacy screen from the menu bar in-game, the same one that has buttons for your character, you skill tree, and so on.

If you check the Legacy Screen and you see your companion’s portrait showing instead of the shadowy silhouette then you’ve successfully unlocked that companion and you no longer need to increase their affection unless you want to get the full crit and efficiency bonuses for having max affection. If you do still see silhouettes then you’ll need to get back to handing out those gifts.]

Affection Farming: Companion Gifts
In patch 1.2 we had two really great changes to the way companion gifts work. First, they removed the 30 second cooldown on them which is fantastic, and second they made them actually stack inside your inventory so that you can use them way more effectively.

Companion gifts come in 10 different types, and each companion likes different types to different degrees. There are four different levels to which a companion can like or dislike a particular type of gift. The four levels are Indifferent, Like, Love, and Favorite.

Each type of gift also comes in four qualities just like your gear does, which is White < Green < Blue < Purple. Naturally, the higher the quality the higher the affection gain. However, gifts also come in five levels, or ranks, from 1-5 which are targeted for different affection levels. Basically, every 2,000 points of affection relates to 1 rank worth of companion gift and your companion's current affection level determines whether they get more or less from a particular rank of companion gift. If you want to get deep into the math to calculate how much affection you'll get from each type of gift then I'll direct you to Dulfy’s post on Companion Gifts.

Gifts are the fastest and easiest method of increasing affection. They certainly aren’t the cheapest, but they are the fastest. Other methods of farming affection include flashpoints and regular questing, both of which we’ll talk about next.

You can scroll to the bottom of this post to find a table that shows you which gifts each companion likes, and how much they like them so you’ll know which gifts to give them.

There will also be a chart of companion gifts that shows you which companions like them so if you find yourself with an abundance of Trophies, you’ll know who you can give them to.

Affection Farming: Black Talon and Esseles
Farming these low level flashpoints is an easy and relatively quick way to earn around 450 Affection with your first companion, no matter which class you’re using. Companions other than the one you start with will receive no affection from running these flashpoints.

Be aware that in order to maximize your affection gains from these runs, you’ll also have to make Light Side and Dark Side choices that are in line with that companions personality. In some cases that’s good since you can also farm your LS/DS points, but in others your companion may very well contradict your alignment so you’ll need to decide whether you want to make all of the maximum affection choices or if you’re willing to sacrifice some affection gains, and take penalties in some cases, in order to maintain or increase your alignment standing.

If you don’t mind running these flashpoints repeatedly then you also have the option of running through to max affection even though you make an opposing alignment choice, and once affection is maxed you just switch out that companion for another or for none at all and then rerun the flashpoint a few more times to get your alignment back where you want it to be (or further along if you want).

This post is already getting longer than I had intended for it to be, so I’m going to leave out the conversation options to maximize all of the companions in this post, but I will have a post specifically dedicated to these in the near future when I decide on the layout I want to do it in.

Affection Farming: Questing
The most effective method I’ve found for farming affection while doing normal questing is to simply look all of the quests up on Torhead.com and open the chat options to see what’s there. You can filter it by class and/or companion if you’d like to make it simpler when striving for affection with just one.

You can do this by searching for the name of the quest if you already know it, or by looking up the name of the NPC who is associated with the quest. If you look up an NPC then you can scroll down to see the names of the quests that they start and the quests that they end, then open the one you need. Not all of the conversation options are there, but the majority of them are.

If you find that you’re in the middle of one of those quests and you’ve run out of conversation options on Torhead but there are still things to say in the game then you’ll want to scroll down further and look at the comments. For most quests there are users who have linked the follow-up quest in the comments. The vast majority of follow-up quests starts right in the middle of a conversation when turning in another quest, so if things start to look a bit different or the subject of the conversation changes then you’ll want to look into follow-up quests.

I will warn you that Torhead is not 100% accurate, but it’s close. You’ll find a lot of conversations where Torhead doesn’t have anything listed, but you can still actually gain affection. You’ll also see that sometimes the game will glitch and not reward you with affection when it should have. If Torhead says you should get affection, but you don’t see it in game then you should press Escape to cancel the quest and then start it up again. If it doesn’t give you affection after the second try, then Torhead was probably wrong, but 90% of the time it’s just a glitch in the game. When the game glitches like that though, you will not get affection that you should have if you don’t back out of the quest. My wife and I have done the same quest on the same class while leveling together and had it glitch for her but not me and at the end of the quest having made exact same decisions I received more affection that she did.

Disclaimer: Doing something like this, where you’re looking up all of the answers for you, can very easily have a negative impact on your enjoyment of the game. Any time you seek to min/max in a game there is always a trade off of some kind. If you’re going to max affection with one of your companions then you’re basically sacrificing your own personality and your freedom of choice in order to score points with the companion. If that’s going to bother you, then don’t do it.

Companion Rushing and Questing
One last thing I wanted to touch on in regards to companions and affection is something I call Companion Rushing. Companion Rushing is where you skip over a particular planet’s quest chains and instead focus solely on your own class quest in order to obtain a companion. This type of rushing is done for multiple reasons, but typically because you either want more companions so that you can send out your maximum number of companions on crew skill tasks and still have one to quest with, or because Companions come with higher level gear so rushing to get a companion from the end of your class story on one planet will mean that that particular companion is overpowered for that same planet.

The quests that are on a planet give affection rewards to your companions with the assumption that you follow a static timeline. That means if you have a companion that you get on Tatooine for example, then none of the quests on that planet are going to give you affection gains with that companion unless the time that you do that quest coincides with the time you’re “supposed” to have gotten the companion if you had done all of the quests in the order that they were designed to be done in. So, rushing to get your companion will give you the companion quicker, but if you plan to quest on that same planet then you’ll want to use another companion while in conversations because the new companion will most likely have no gains or losses associated with that planet’s quests.

This same logic applies to doing Esseles and Black Talon runs, as well. If you don’t have access to a companion during the level range that’s appropriate for the content, then there are no affection gains to be had. That’s why those first two flashpoints only reward affection with the first companion of every class, because in terms of the timeline your other companions don’t technically exist at the time your character is supposedly running through those flashpoints. The developers didn’t bother putting in affection rewards for later companions to receive during earlier content, so just be sure to use appropriate level companions during all conversations.

Affection Tables
The first table that I was going to link here turned out to be freaking massive since there are 40 companions to put into it, so I decided not to include the table here. Instead, I’m going to give you a link to a Google Document that I made to house all of my companion related information and research, and I’ll let you use the second sheet in there to see which companions like which gives.

That link should default you to the tab that has all 40 companions listed alphabetically on the top so that you can easily scroll over and find the one you’re looking for. I tried to use everyone’s first name as a point of reference there, except for those who are known most commonly by a title and then a name. For example, Doctor Lokin is listed under ‘D’ rather than ‘L’.

This second table lists each type of companion gift and then breaks down how much each companion likes that gift. When you have companion gifts sitting in your inventory and you need to figure out what to do with them, refer to this list to find out who has the best affection gains from it.

{R} indicates that companion only gets that amount of affection if you currently have an active romance with them. Otherwise, they will appear in one of the other categories for that item, or not at all.

15 responses to “Legacy and Companions”

Great post! I thought I’d mention that the bonuses from maxing out a companion seem to scale with level and always work out to be a 1% boost, so far as I can tell. Thank you for the very comprehensive guide!

Thanks for the chart It’s much easier to see when I have a certain type of Gift as a mission reward, which companion—and therefore which PC—needs it, as opposed to looking at a companion and deciding what Gift might be good.

Sooo…. I meant to post my comment on this article, but I must fail at using a basic web browser… and ended up on the wrong article. But it’s all good, now you get to read my comment… TWICE!!! Original comment:

I’ve been looking around for these companion max affection bonuses, so MUCH LOVE from me. Mr. Robot on the other hand, is giving you a Bro-hug instead of mucho amore. (He’s a little hurt… he thought you were friends, but then he saw you link to gear on Torhead. Don’t tell him I told you, but it made him cry a little…)

Are the romance arcs required for Jedi characters to unlock their companion buffs? That seems a bit harsh for light-side Jedi who aren’t supposed to romance. I get the impression most other choices in game can be fixed with sufficient numbers of gifts.

No, you can reach all conversations and affection levels without pursuing romance with the companions. On the flip side, while the Jedi Code states that they should avoid romance, there’s no Dark Side options or anything of the like forced on you for doing so with your companion. Some of the dating/romances that you can pursue with random NPC’s will require dark points, but there’s no drawback in-game to taking on a romance with your companion.

All of the companions who can be romanced will essentially ask if you want to be romantic with them, and you can turn them down. You will almost always lose some affection points by turning them down, but it will not hurt you at all in the long run from maxing their affection or completing all of the conversations/quests.